Learn How Your Body Responds to a Variety of Different Foods

Do you ever feel like you may have certain symptoms related to foods, such as headaches, stomach pain, or diarrhea? Do you feel you may want to try eliminating possible triggers, but you are not sure where to start?

Our Food Sensitivity Test measures your body’s IgG immune response to 96 common foods.

A temporary elimination diet is a way to help you pinpoint foods that may be causing your symptoms. This test is not the same as a food allergy test. Food allergies are mediated by IgE antibodies, and symptoms for food allergies typically occur within minutes to hours of exposure. These symptoms are often severe and potentially life-threatening. Food sensitivities, on the other hand, are often marked by a low and slow onset, and involve an entirely different antibody—IgG. In addition, this test does not test for lactose intolerance, IBS, or celiac disease.

Your body may have an immune response to foods you eat, which may manifest as physical symptoms. Some of our customers take the Food Sensitivity Test because they experience symptoms like:

• Bloating
• Headaches
• Indigestion
• Gastrointestinal (GI) distress
• Stomach or adominal pain

If you are looking to add a potentially ‘problematic’ food back into your diet to see if you’re still reactive to it on your test results, it’s recommended to consume that food for about 4-6 weeks prior to testing.

The results of your Everlywell Food Sensitivity Test are intended to be used to guide a temporary elimination diet with an add-back challenge. This is a critical step in helping pinpoint which foods may be causing your unwanted symptoms.

We understand that food elimination and restriction can lead to or trigger disordered eating behavior. For this reason, it is not recommended to take the Food Sensitivity Test if you currently have or are in recovery for an eating disorder (i.e., anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating disorder).

It is also not recommended to use the results of your Food Sensitivity Test to achieve weight loss. Eating a balanced diet is important and your results are not intended to strictly limit your consumption and inhibit your ability to obtain necessary calories and nutrients from food.

Due to the specific nutritional needs of pregnant and breastfeeding women, elimination diets are not recommended. It’s best to speak with your healthcare provider for advisement should you be experiencing unwanted symptoms.

Are Everlywell tests suitable for children?

Everlywell currently does not offer tests to anyone below the age of 18 because we aren't able to irrefutably validate the guardianship of that minor. Everlywell and our Physician Network take those matters very seriously and, as a result of it not being possible for us to confidently verify that guardianship, we can not authorize those labs to be performed. This is noted in the everlywell.com cart page, our terms of use, the FAQ section, and our physical kits. Additionally, we restrict registration for anyone below the age of 18.

If a test was purchased on Everlywell.com and your order hasn’t shipped, we can offer a full refund upon request. If your order has already shipped, we can offer a full refund minus $15 to cover shipping and handling fees. Our full returns policy can be found here.

In addition, if you notify us that a submitted test was used by a minor before our lab begins processing, we can offer a refund minus $15. If we discover that an account was created and contains results from a minor, we will remove the account within 24 hours and no refund will be issued.

For any other questions regarding this policy, please feel free to contact our Customer Care Team.

All of the laboratories with whom we partner are considered industry leaders in their respective areas, with extensive histories and have performed millions of tests. All of them perform frequent internal quality controls and testing, as well as regular third-party testing for independent validation of the accuracy of their testing. Consistently, such validation shows a high degree (>95-99%) results correlation.

IgG antibody reactivity is based on exposure to the food or foods; therefore, individuals who have since eliminated “problematic” foods from their diet may see a lower reactivity than expected.

Your food sensitivity results will tell you how reactive your IgG antibodies are to 96 common foods.

Each food will be rated on a Class scale of 0-3: Class 0 (normal reactivity) to Class 3 (high reactivity). This is a great place to start if you want to dig into your body's relationship with food.

You will also get:

• Tailored suggestions about what to do next
• Help prioritizing your temporary elimination diet
• Personalized information and education

EverlyWell will provide tailored suggestions about what to do next. While reactivity does not always equate with symptoms, it can help prioritize the foods selected for a temporary elimination diet. Once you have your IgG test results, you can try an elimination diet of your choosing until you achieve the right balance of minimizing your symptoms while maintaining a lifestyle that you enjoy.

You may choose to not stop eating certain foods, but knowing your reactivity might lead to adjustments in how much or frequently you eat them.

Our tests provide personalized information and education; they are not intended to diagnose any disease or condition or to substitute for professional medical advice or treatment. You should always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health care provider with any questions you have regarding your medical care.

This test is a great place to start if you want to dig into your body's relationship with food and is generally more affordable than comparable tests. Enjoy food sensitivity testing the way it should be; quick, easy, and from the convenience of your home. If you have any questions feel free to chat with us below.

Your body can react to a “troublesome” food in several different ways, and how your body reacts to that food depends on whether you have a food sensitivity, food intolerance, or food allergy. It’s not uncommon for confusion to exist around the fact that allergies, intolerances, and sensitivities aren’t interchangeable. Here, we’ll explore each of these types of adverse reactions to food – starting with food sensitivity.

Food Sensitivity

A food sensitivity may result from a type of immune system response that’s very different than a food allergy. While not entirely understood, research has shown that people may identify symptom-causing foods using the results of IgG testing along with an elimination diet. IgG antibody reactions against those foods may be normal in some people, but in others it may cause symptoms because of the inflammation the immune reaction produces from those interactions. Food sensitivity symptoms reported by our customers include headaches, bloating, stomach pain, indigestion – and more.

What’s really interesting about food sensitivities is that symptoms usually don’t appear as soon as you eat the problem food. Instead, you might have symptoms hours or days after eating that food – which can make it hard to connect specific foods to the symptoms you’re experiencing.

Fortunately, with an elimination diet and EverlyWell’s Food Sensitivity Test, you can discover what foods you may be sensitive to.

Learn more:
Food Sensitivity Explained
Food Allergy vs. Food Sensitivity
Food Sensitivity Toolkit

Food Allergy

When you eat a food you’re allergic to, your immune system responds by activating the IgE antibodies in your blood. Those antibody-food interactions result in the production of a chemical called histamine. Histamine is a type of substance your immune system makes. When immune cells release histamine in your body, you might experience any number of allergy symptoms. (That’s why many over-the-counter allergy medications are known as “antihistamines” – they counteract the allergic effects of histamine.) With food allergies, symptoms usually appear almost as soon as you’ve eaten the trigger food.

An example of a food allergy is an allergy to tree nuts, one of the most common causes of food-related allergic reactions in the world. (Hazelnuts, walnuts, and macadamia nuts are all examples of tree nuts.)

If you’re allergic to a certain food, you can experience a potentially life-threatening allergic reaction whenever you eat that food. That’s because anaphylaxis can occur within minutes of consuming food allergens. Anaphylaxis can result in death because of a dramatic drop in blood pressure – or because of swelling around the person’s airways, which cuts off the body’s supply of air.

Food Intolerance

A food intolerance can occur if, for example, you don’t have enough of the right enzymes your body needs to break down a particular food. (Enzymes are special proteins in the body that dramatically speed up chemical reactions.)

An example of a food intolerance is lactose intolerance. Lactose is a type of sugar commonly found in cow’s milk. If you’re lactose intolerant, your body doesn’t produce enough lactase – the enzyme that breaks down lactose. So it’s hard for your body to digest lactose effectively, resulting in unpleasant symptoms when you drink a glass of milk or eat dairy products. Food intolerance symptoms commonly include nausea, bloating, and diarrhea.

Unlike food allergies, food intolerances don’t involve an immune system response - they all take place inside the gut before digestion occurs.

If you have a sensitivity to a particular food, you might experience one or more adverse reactions several hours or days after eating that food. Some reported symptoms from our customers include:

• Headaches
• Bloating
• Stomach or abdominal pain
• Indigestion
• Gastrointestinal distress

Related test for bloating symptom: Thyroid Test

An elimination diet can be a useful tool for uncovering the specific foods you’re sensitive to.

Basically, in an elimination diet, you temporarily remove foods from your diet that you suspect could be giving you symptoms. In other words, you stop eating those “suspect foods” for a given amount of time – often between 4-6 weeks.

Next, you add those foods back to your diet – one at a time. Each time you add a “suspect food” back to your diet, you watch for symptoms for about 2-3 days. If a food you’re adding back doesn’t result in symptoms, then you continue eating it as a normal part of your diet. But if a food does give you symptoms when you add it back to your diet, then you’ve likely found a food you’re sensitive to.

That’s why food sensitivity testing can make a real difference if you want to discover the foods you’re sensitive to. A food sensitivity test checks the reactivity levels of your IgG antibodies for many different foods. (IgG antibodies are another type of antibody that your immune system produces.)

If you have a high IgG reactivity level to a certain food, there’s a possibility that food may be involved with causing your food sensitivity symptoms.

So taking a food sensitivity test can give you a list of “suspect foods” that’s based on your body’s immune system response. You can then use this information to guide your elimination diet – and to choose what foods to eliminate at first. This helps remove a lot of the “guessing” in the elimination diet process – and can make it easier for you to pinpoint the foods behind your symptoms.

Learn more:

How To Use A Food Elimination Diet To Discover Your Food Sensitivities

IgG food sensitivity testing accuracy

An IgG blood test for food sensitivity reveals your IgG reactivity levels for different foods. A higher level of IgG reactivity for a given food suggests that it may be causing your symptoms.

However, higher IgG reactivity levels don’t always correlate with symptom-causing foods – which is why it’s so important to use an elimination diet (guided by your IgG test results) to accurately pinpoint your specific food sensitivities.

However, the skin prick test isn’t the only way food allergy testing is done.

How much does a food allergy test cost?

How much is an allergy test? That depends on many factors, such as the type of allergy test, the number of foods tested, and more. So unfortunately there’s no straightforward answer to this question.

Note that EverlyWell’s Food Sensitivity Test is NOT an allergy test. Allergy testing generally requires medical supervision because the test can trigger allergic reactions that are very severe – and even fatal.

EverlyWell’s Food Sensitivity Test will not tell you what foods you’re allergic to. Instead, it will tell you what foods you may be sensitive to, which can help guide your elimination diet. Food sensitivities can result in a number of very unpleasant symptoms (such as headaches, bloating, and more), so discovering what foods you’re sensitive to can put you on a path towards greater well-being.

Next, you gradually add those foods back to your diet to see if your symptoms reappear when any specific foods are added back to your diet.